Article by
Barbados Today

Published on
October 19, 2016

The apparent lack of evidence or movement in the case against Kobia Jamal Robinson, three years after he was charged with murder, is not sitting well with his attorney Angella Mitchell-Gittens.

Robinson, of Reed Street, St Michael is charged with the death of 54-year-old Robert Rupert Jones of Speightstown, St Peter, whose body was discovered on October 5, 2013 at Lower James Street, Bridgetown.

When the matter came up before Magistrate Kristie Cuffy-Sargeant in the No. 2 District ‘A’ Court Tuesday, police prosecutor Sergeant Janice Ifill said she was awaiting instructions from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) in the matter.

“October of 2016 [and] we are still waiting instructions? To say what, Ma’am?” Mitchell-Gittens asked.

“These things can’t be right. This is beyond unbearable. Certainly, if you give someone a capital charge then you must expedite the matter . . . . How can we be awaiting instructions from the DPP three years after a person is charged with murder?

“Three years – October 2013 to October 2016 – [and] not one line of evidence to say he did it, he didn’t do it . . . . Something is seriously wrong,” the lawyer argued.

The magistrate admitted that the situation was not acceptable, saying that someone from the DPP’s office needed to give an account.

The prosecutor subsequently made contact, and returned to inform the court that the DPP’s office was not yet ready with the Voluntary Bill of Indictment for the case.

“This is neither right nor fair,” a frustrated Mitchell-Gittens declared.

“. . . Because Kobia Robinson ‘ain’t nobody, he can [stay] in prison and when we get to him, we get to him?’ These things are neither right nor fair, Ma’am.

“If someone is going to be charged with murder, I can only imagine that you have sufficient information in which you proffer that charge.”

The matter was adjourned to November 17 after the magistrate, who had left the chair for a few minutes, informed Mitchell-Gittens on the way forward in the matter after she had spoken to the DPP’s office.